Not content to announce a game at GDC, Super Crate Box creators Vlambeer decided to release one during the show. Yeti Hunter is the second most unnerving game I’ve played today. Hopefully I’ll have written lots about the most unnerving tomorrow but for now, if you feel you have too many nerves, you’ll have to make do with this tiny slice of freeware horror. There are yeti, see, but due to spelling quandaries I’m not sure if that’s singular or plural. There could be loads of them. And there’s blood in the snow. Whose is it? Am I a Yeti Hunter or is there a yeti wot likes to hunt stalking me? It’s a game of grammatical confusion and trouser-fouling.

Here’s the problem with hunting this bastard monster; it’s the same colour as its surroundings, white on white, and with snow falling thick and fast, every flake and flurry starts to look like the fangs and fur of the thing bearing down. I’ve glimpsed it a few times, I’m sure of it, even fired off a shot in its direction once, but mostly I just climb trees, scout out the surroundings and look for pools of blood.

Red is the trail and dark is the night. When the sun goes down, my approach is to hide at the top of a tree and wait until morning. Visibility is bad enough in the day.

I doubt this will keep anyone entertained for very long but it’s an effective, minimalist stress inducer and particular mention must go to Kozilek’s wonderful music, which is the major contributor to the atmosphere of unease. A slight but effective oddity. Download it here.

I’ve noticed the same thing. I can be staring straight at it, walking away between a bush and a tree. I raise my scope. Instantly, all I see through the scope is the bush and the tree, and the yeti is gone.

It hapenned to me too, then I saw him again and decided to duck before taking the shot, he stopped moving, but just before I could raise the scope night came and he got lost on the darkness. I couldn’t be arsed to find him for the 4th time.

So nothing happens during the day, and at night it’s too scary to do anything but sit in a tree. The yeti appears unshootable. Whatever I’m supposed to “get,” I didn’t get it. What was I supposed to do?

It’s nice for what it is. I wish I felt like there was a reason to move forward, but it doesn’t seem like where you are or where you go matters.

The yeti stands out more at night but really it isn’t that hard to spot. Although if it’s possible to actually hunt it or if this is just a prankster “mindfuck” game I do not know but it seems there is one simple thing to do to not scare it away…

But the only thing horrifying about it appears to be the lack of mouse y axis toggle.

I personally do not like inverted mouse — my mouse is not a joystick, neither am I flying a head — but it really should always be an option. If a game forced inverted y axis on me I’d be inclined to go “screw this” too.

Why would people use inverted Y? The only reason i see using it is that back in mid 90s people were used to fighter sims being the only realtime FPS games and moved the control philosophy from there (joystick -> mouse). But c’mon.. it’s 2012. There’s absolutely 0 reasons to play inverted Y anymore.

Some of us just can’t get our heads round mouseUp -> up, mouseDown -> down, and the same with controller sticks.

I’ve always thought of it as a pivot that exists at the monitor/tele border, so if there was a beam that stretched from yourself to inside the monitor, your viewpoint is on the end of that beam. Pull down on the beam in the real world, and the view goes up in the virtual one (because of the pivot), push up on the beam in the real world, the view goes down in the virtual one.

As someone who used inverted mouse his entire life, until I started playing 3rd person FPS (and now can’t use inverted mouse anymore), I understand both viewpoints, but still, the inverted mouse is the one that makes more sense to me. I miss being able to play like that =(

I wasn’t sure there was a yeti at all, until I saw a shape that disappeared when I took aim at it. The first night was mildly shocking the way it drops it on you suddenly, but by the second I was careening around carelessly, daring the yeti to do more than stand in the distance and disappear when I aim at it.

It’s more a game where you’re worried about dying of the cold than hunting a yeti.

It also breaks that cardinal rule of game design, wherein you’re not meant to have the character do something cool in a cutscene that the player can’t have them do in gameplay. Namely, hit the gorram yeti.

This game is a simulation of insanity. I went insane after playing for 45 minutes. After endless nights hunting, I finally broke down and started seeing the yeti everywhere in the day. I would turn, aim shoot. It’s gone. Then I’d see it a moment later. It was getting closer. I knew it was getting closer, but I couldn’t kill it. Then it’s gone again. I don’t know what to do. Then I crawled for while. Waited in tree. Nothing. No Yeti. Then I crawled again. And there it was. It stopped. It came closer. It stopped. It came closer. I was ready to shoot. I was ready. Then the screen went black. Complete blackness. I shot. Still black. I am dead?